Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning (...) business activity with the broader public interest . This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR. (shrink)

Gary L. Francione is a law professor and leading philosopher of animal rights theory. Robert Garner is a political theorist specializing in the philosophy and politics of animal protection. Francione maintains that we have no moral justification for using nonhumans and argues that because animals are property—or economic commodities—laws or industry practices requiring "humane" treatment will, as a general matter, fail to provide any meaningful level of protection. Garner favors a version of animal rights that focuses on eliminating animal (...) suffering and adopts a protectionist approach, maintaining that although the traditional animal-welfare ethic is philosophically flawed, it can contribute strategically to the achievement of animal-rights ends. As they spar, Francione and Garner deconstruct the animal protection movement in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and elsewhere, discussing the practices of such organizations as PETA, which joins with McDonald's and other animal users to "improve" the slaughter of animals. They also examine American and European laws and campaigns from both the rights and welfare perspectives, identifying weaknesses and strengths that give shape to future legislation and action. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of psychopathy have been framed primarily in terms of psychopaths' conspicuous moral shortcomings. But despite their vaunted ‘egocentricity’, another prominent trait in the standard psychopathic profile is a characteristic failure to look after themselves; in an important way, psychopaths appear to be as careless of themselves as they are of others. Assuming that the standard profile is largely correct, the question is how these moral and prudential deficits are related. Are they linked in some non‐accidental way? This paper (...) is a sympathetic exploration and articulation of the hypothesis that psychopathy involves an incapacity for critical distance from from one's own impulses and inclinations, an incapacity that would explain the lack of both prudential and moral regard. (shrink)

This essay is about the difficulties of doing criminal justice in the context of severe social injustice. Having been marginalized as citizens of the larger community, those who are victims of severe social injustice are understandably alienated from the dominant political institutions, and, not unreasonably, disrespect their authority, including that of the criminal law. The failure of equal treatment and protection and the absence of anything like fair and decent life prospects for the members of the marginalized populations erode the (...) basis for its allegiance to demands of the political community. The criminal law thus occupies a problematic normative position with respect to lawbreakers in this population; in many cases, it finds itself in the position of convicting them for crimes for which the political community itself bears some significant responsibility. The attempt to administer criminal justice therefore faces a serious moral predicament; on the one hand, criminal law has a right and an.. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022. -/- In a moment where needs for care are acute and their provision precarious, feminist care ethics has gained new relevance as a framework for understanding and responding to necessary interdependence. This article reviews and evaluates two long-standing critiques of care ethics in light of this recent research. First, I assess what I call the pluralist feminist critique, or the dispute over the ability of care ethics to address the needs and histories (...) of a range of marginalized subjects. I identify two forms of this critique: the first disputes the biased starting points shaping the development of the theory, and the second concerns the weaponization of care in support of domination. Although these critiques are well-established, I draw attention to recent responses that move care theory in generative directions. I argue that the pluralist feminist critique demands both self-critical transformation in dialog with other feminist schools of thought and a robust account of care ethics' normative authority. I then take up critiques those levied by mainstream ethicists concerned with care theory's adequacy as an ethical approach. I show that recent work on normative authority, conceptual uniqueness, and the grounding of responsibility must be engaged before care theory can be dismissed as “under-theorized.” In articulating these two sets of critiques and evaluating recent rebuttals to them, I argue for a pluralist feminist theory of care within which strands informed by varying philosophical schools and methods can coexist. (shrink)

Philosophy of language explores some of the fundamental yet most technical problems in philosophy, such as meaning and reference, semantics, and propositional attitudes. Some of its greatest exponents, including Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell are amongst the major figures in the history of philosophy. In this clear and carefully structured introduction to the subject Gary Kemp explains the following key topics: the basic nature of philosophy of language and its historical development early arguments concerning the role of (...) meaning, including cognitive meaning vs expressivism, context and compositionality Frege’s arguments concerning sense and reference; non-existent objects Russell and the theory of definite descriptions modern theories including Kripke and Putnam; arguments concerning necessity, analyticity and natural kind terms indexicality, context and modality. What are indexicals? Davidson’s theory of language and the ‘principle of charity’ propositional attitudes Quine’s naturalism and its consequences for philosophy of language. Chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of language and will be particularly useful for students coming to the subject for the first time. (shrink)

We examine a number of investigations of perceptual economy or, more specifically, of minimum tendencies and minimum principles in the visual perception of form, depth, and motion. A minimum tendency is a psychophysical finding that perception tends toward simplicity, as measured in accordance with a specified metric. A minimum principle is a theoretical construct imputed to the visual system to explain minimum tendencies. After examining a number of studies of perceptual economy, we embark on a systematic analysis of this notion. (...) We examine the notion that simple perceptual representations must be defined within the "geometric constraints" provided by proximal stimulation. We then take up metrics of simplicity. Any study of perceptual economy must use a metric of simplicity; the choice of metric may be seen as a matter of convention, or it may have deep theoretical and empirical implications. We evaluate several answers to the question of why the visual system might favor economical representations. Finally, we examine several accounts of the process for achieving perceptual economy, concluding that those which favor massively parallel processing are the most plausible. (shrink)

The volume contains papers and commentaries presented to the _Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy_ during the academic year 2015-16. Works: Phaedrus, Republic, Apology, Laws, Seventh Letter, Stoic texts. Topics: Stoic blending, reciprocal eros, perception in tripartite soul, Stoic identity, Plato’s politics and events.

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam held that in our pursuit of truth we can do no better than to start in the middle, relying on already-established beliefs and inferences and applying our best methods for re-evaluating particular beliefs and inferences and arriving at new ones. In this collection of essays, Gary Ebbs interprets these thinkers' methodological views in the light of their own philosophical commitments, and in the process refutes some widespread misunderstandings of their views, reveals the real strengths of (...) their arguments, and exposes a number of problems that they face. To solve these problems, in many of the essays Ebbs also develops new philosophical approaches, including new theories of logical truth, language use, reference and truth, truth by convention, realism, trans-theoretical terms, agreement and disagreement, radical belief revision, and contextually a priori statements. His essays will be valuable for a wide range of readers in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

While the claim that certain functional states are sufficient for conscious experience has received substantial critical attention, the claim that functional states are necessary is rarely addressed. Yet the latter claim is perhaps now more common than the former. I aim to revive and revise a neglected argument against the necessity claim, by Michael Antony. The argument involves manipulating a conscious subject's brain so as to cancel a disposition which is supposedly crucial to the realization of an experience that the (...) subject is having at the time. The key step in the argument is to show that, contrary to what the functional necessity claim implies, the experience can survive such a manipulation. I defend that key step in a new way, by arguing that since the manipulation cannot influence the subject's thoughts, emotions, or behavior, there is no reason to suppose that it alters his conscious experience. (shrink)

A properly programmed artificially intelligent agent may eventually have one duty, the duty to satisfice expected welfare. We explain this claim and defend it against objections.

In philosophical writings from Descartes’ time, the topic of attention attracted notice but not systematic treatment. In Descartes’s own writings, attention was not given the kind of extended analysis that he devoted to the theory of the senses, or the passions, or to the intellect and will. Nonetheless, phenomena of attention arose in relation to these other topics and were discussed in terms of mental operations and, where appropriate, relations to bodily organs. Although not producing a systematic account, Descartes frequently (...) noted attentional phenomena and creatively imagined intricate relations between sensory attention and brain processes. Descartes's observations of attentional phenomena show remarkable breadth, including cases of active mental control of attention and cases in which attention is drawn involuntarily to a novel event (first section). Descartes did not merely observe attentional phenomena; he also offered a framework for understanding them (second section). Part of this framework related attention to the activity of the will. Part also came from his conception of mind-body interaction. He assigned a significant functional role to brain processes in explaining mental phenomena, including aspects of attention. He sometimes moves beyond the usual notions of unidirectional activity or passivity in the process of interaction. Rather, mind and brain are mutually constraining. Mental and physiological processes form a functional unity, in which brain processes contribute to the mental functioning of attention (final section). Furthermore, Descartes was willing to speak of “attention” in the mindless machine portrayed in his Traité de l’homme. That work describes brain states that interact with mind to explain aspects of mental attention. But we must also suppose that these same brain states constitute attention as it occurs in non-human animals, which lack a mind. According to Descartes, although attention is, in the first instance, a mental phenomenon, it can also be ascribed to non-human animals that share brain mechanisms with human beings and the behavior of which can be described as attentively directed toward selected objects in the environment. Translated into French by Olivier Dubouclez. (shrink)

Traditional Plato scholarship, in the English-speaking world, has assumed that Platonic dialogues are merely collections of arguments. Inevitably, the question arises: If Plato wanted to present collections of arguments, why did he write dialogues instead of treatises? Concerned about this question, some scholars have been experimenting with other, more contextualized ways of reading the dialogues. This anthology is among the first to present these new approaches as pursued by a variety of scholars. As such, it offers new perspectives on Plato (...) as well as a suggestive view of Plato scholarship as something of a laboratory for historians of philosophy generally. The essays gathered here each examine vital aspects of Plato’s many methods, considering his dialogues in relation to Thucydides and Homer, narrative strategies and medical practice, images and metaphors. They offer surprising new research into such much-studied works as _The Republic_ as well as revealing views of lesser-known dialogues like the _Cratylus_ and _Philebus_. With reference to thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Sartre, the authors place the Platonic dialogues in an illuminating historical context. Together, their essays should reinvigorate the scholarly examination of the way Plato’s dialogues “work”—and should prompt a reconsideration of how the form of Plato’s philosophical writing bears on the Platonic conception of philosophy. (shrink)

The most striking difference between Christian and Muslim theologies is that while, for Christians, God is a person, Muslims worship an impersonal deity. Despite the importance of this difference for a host of theological issues, it is a difference which has gone largely unnoticed by Christians and Muslims alike. Yet Christians everywhere will affirm that God is a person, while the average Muslim will readily deny this. Theism is often defined by philosophers of religion who work in the Christian tradition (...) in such a manner as to require the belief that God is a person. Thus The Encyclopedia of Philosophy has it that, ‘THEISM signifies belief in one God who is personal, worthy of adoration, and separate from the world but continuously active in it”. John H. Hick admits that, ‘ Theism …is strictly belief in a deity, but is generally used to mean belief in a personal deity”. Richard Swinburne states that a theist is one who believes that there is a God who is a ‘person without a body who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe”, and J. L. Mackie, while arguing the case of atheism, endorses Swinburne's definition of theism. (shrink)

Scientific research is subject to a number of regulations which impose incidental (time, place), rather than substantive (type of research), restrictions on scientific research and the knowledge created through such research. In recent years, however, the premise that scientific research and knowledge should be free from substantive regulation has increasingly been called into question. Some have suggested that the law should be used as a tool to substantively restrict research which is dual-use in nature or which raises moral objections. There (...) are, however, some problems with using law to restrict or prohibit certain types of scientific research, including (i) the inherent imprecision of law for regulating complex and rapidly evolving scientific research; (ii) the difficulties of enforcing legal restrictions on an activity that is international in scope; (iii) the limited predictability of the consequences of restricting specific branches of scientific research; (iv) inertia in the legislative process; and (v) the susceptibility of legislators and regulators to inappropriate factors and influence. Rather than using law to restrict scientific research, it may be more appropriate and effective to use a combination of non-traditional legal tools including norms, codes of conduct, restrictions on publication, and scientist-developed voluntary standards to regulate problematic scientific research. (shrink)

Agricultural biotechnology refers to a diverse set of industrial techniques used to produce genetically modified foods. Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods manipulated at the molecular level to enhance their value to farmers and consumers. This book is a collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of ag biotech. The essays were written over a dozen years, beginning in 1988. When I began to reflect on the subject, ag biotech was an exotic, untested, technology. Today, in the first year of (...) the millenium, the vast majority of consumers in the United States have taken a bite of the apple. Milk produced by cows injected with a GM protein called recombinant bovine growth hormone (bGH), is found, unlabelled, on grocery shelves throughout the US. In 1999, half of the soybeans and cotton harvested in the US were GM varieties. Billions of dollars of public and private monies are being invested annually in biotech research, and commercial sales now reach into the tens of billions of dollars each year. Whereas ag biotech once promised to change American agriculture, it now is in the process of doing so. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore a documentary about the curious case of Charlie and his Orchestra. While swing music was outlawed in Nazi Germany as “degenerate,” the Nazi regime created a radio program called “Charlie and his Orchestra” for foreign consumption. The propaganda lay in the changes to the original lyrics of the songs played, making them convey the anti-Semitic and other themes of the Nazi ideology. The review discusses just how good the musicians were, and how popular the program (...) was. (shrink)

We find the theory of neural reuse to be highly plausible, and suggest that human individual differences provide an additional line of argument in its favor, focusing on the well-replicated finding of in which individual differences are highly correlated across domains. We also suggest that the theory of neural reuse may be an important contributor to the phenomenon of positive manifold itself.

In their widely discussed paper, “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style”, Machery et al. argue that Kripke’s Gödel–Schmidt case, generally thought to undermine the description theory of names, rests on culturally variable intuitions: while Western subjects’ intuitions conflict with the description theory of names, those of East Asian subjects do not. Machery et al. attempt to explain this discrepancy by appealing to differences between Western and East Asian modes of categorization, as identified in an influential study by Nisbett et al. I claim that (...) these differences fail to explain the conflicting intuitions. Moreover, Machery et al.’s initial conjecture—that the relevant cultural differences would manifest themselves in differing semantic intuitions—is legitimate only if we assume that the Gödel–Schmidt case is used both to undermine descriptivism and establish the causal theory. But, as I argue, this is not Kripke’s intention. This misunderstanding persists in the recent clarification of their views in “If Folk Intuitions Vary, Then What?” (Machery et al., Philos Phenomenol Res, 2012). (shrink)

Let us call the deliberate modification of an individual’s genome to improve it or its progeny intentional genetic enhancement. Governments are almost certain to require that any proposed intentional genetic enhancement of a human (IGEH) be tested first on (what researchers call) animal “models.” Intentional genetic enhancement of animals (IGEA), then, is an ambiguous concept because it could mean one of two very different things: an enhancement made for the sake of the animal’s own welfare, or an enhancement made for (...) the sake of satisfying a human desire. In either case, experimental procedures are likely to entail substantial risks to the experimental animals. What rules should govern IGEA? I criticize the abolitionist conclusions of animal rightists—that no IGEA should be permitted—and I criticize the permissive conclusions of speciesists—that all IGEA should be permitted. Both views are unsatisfying. I suggest instead that current animal welfare law provides a defensible platform on which to begin building ethically justifiable policy in this area. (shrink)

Nanotechnology is the latest in a growing list of emerging technologies that includes nuclear technologies, genetics, reproductive biology, biotechnology, information technology, robotics, communication technologies, surveillance technologies, synthetic biology, and neuroscience. As was the case for many of the technologies that came before, a key question facing nanotechnology is what type of regulatory oversight is appropriate for this emerging technology. As two of us wrote several years ago, the question facing nanotechnology is not whether it will be regulated, but when and (...) how.Yet, appropriate regulation of nanotechnology will be challenging. The term “nanotechnology” incorporates a broad, diverse range of materials, technologies, and products, with an even greater spectrum of potential risks and benefits. This technology slashes across the jurisdiction of many existing regulatory statutes and regulatory agencies, and does so across the globe. Nanotechnology is developing at an enormously rapid rate, perhaps surpassing the capability of any potential regulatory framework to keep pace. Finally, the risks of nanotechnology remain largely unknown, both because of the multitude of variations in the technology and because of the limited applicability of traditional toxicological approaches such as structure-activity relationship to nanotechnology products. (shrink)

Part one: the search for cosmic consciousness -- R.M. Bucke and the future of humanity -- William James and the anesthetic revelation -- Henri Bergson and the Elan Vital -- The superman -- A.R. Orage and the new age -- Ouspensky's fourth dimension -- Part two: esoteric evolution -- The bishop and the bulldog -- Enter the madame -- Dr. Steiner, I presume? -- From Goethean science to the wisdom of the human being -- Cosmic evolution -- Hypnagogia -- Part (...) three: the archaeology of consciousness -- The invisible mind -- Cracking the egg -- Lost worlds -- Noncerebral consciousness -- The split -- Part four: participatory epistemology -- The shock of metaphor -- The participating mind -- The tapestry of nature -- Thinking about thinking -- The black hole of consciousness -- Other times and places -- Faculty X -- Part five: the presence of origin -- The ascent of Mount Ventoux -- Structures of consciousness -- The mental-rational structure -- The integral structure -- Last words: playing for time. (shrink)

Philosophers and lawyers are apt to view property law from different perspectives. At the risk of gross overgeneralization, philosophers who discuss property rights tend to focus on the abstract principles that underlie ownership claims, while lawyers are more likely to focus on the practical problems of adjudicating concrete disputes within the constraints of a functioning legal system. Lawyers, for example, are likely to be more sensitive than philosophers to the real-world problems of proof that often accompany legal claims of ownership. (...) For a lawyer, the key question is not whether any given theory of property rights is true in some metaphysical sense, but whether, given the theory of property rights employed by a particular legal system, a litigant within that system can prove an ownership claim to the satisfaction of an officially constituted tribunal. (shrink)

This article marshals the known evidence for the political relations between the Seljuk sultan of Anatolia or Rūm, Kay Kāʾūs I (r. 608–616/1211–1220), and the Assassins or Ismailis in Iran and Syria. This evidence indicates that the sultan corresponded with the grand master of the Assassins in Iran, was aware of their activities in western Iran and of their coreligionists in Syria, paid protection money to them, and included them in his political calculations.

The Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act was passed in 2002 in response to various instances of corporate malfeasance. The Act, designed to protect investors, led to wide-ranging regulation over various actions of managers, auditors and investment analysts. Part of SOX, and the focus of this study, targeted the disclosure by firms of “pro forma” earnings, an alternate (from GAAP earnings), flexible and unaudited measure of firm performance. Specifically, SOX directed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to craft regulation which would reduce – (...) and preferably eliminate – any pro forma earnings disclosure which might be “misleading”. Examining earnings press releases over a 3-year period, this study addresses three questions. Were firms disclosing pro forma in a potentially misleading manner, what was the nature of this potentially misleading disclosure, and did SOX affect the disclosure practices? We find the following. In 2001 (prior to SOX), 53 firms – over 10% of all U.S. S&P 500 firms – were disclosing pro forma earnings in a potentially misleading manner. This was being done most commonly by using traditional GAAP terminology (e.g., “net income”) in the press release headline to describe what was later in the press release revealed to be a pro forma amount (i.e., “net income excluding special items”). By 2003 (subsequent to the SEC regulation), potentially misleading disclosure practices were seen in less than 1% of the earnings press releases of S&P 500 firms. This significant reduction suggests that managers, prior to the regulation, were either careless in their pro forma reporting practice, or were intentionally – and unethically – attempting to mislead investors. Either way, we conclude that the SEC regulation was both necessary and effective. (shrink)

La romancière ne sait pas de quoi relèvent les apparitions d’OVNI, mais elle aime le « point de bascule entre le présent et le possible » qu’offrent les rendez-vous mensuels des ufologues parisiens. Un dispositif poreux, proche de celui qu’elle met en place dans l’écriture pour imaginer ses histoires.

This article reviews contemporary response to several contrasting strands of recent empirical work. It begins with discussing the scope and rationale of evidence law. Experimental studies on eyewitness memory and testimony illustrate the potential value of empirical studies to the practice of investigations, prosecutions, and appeals. This article discusses several lines of empirical inquiry employing diverse methodologies, experiments, surveys, and approaches and reviews their limitations, and implications and significance for the understanding and practice of law. Many of the contributions from (...) empirical legal studies are provisional and their precise value for practice is uncertain or ambiguous, but they raise important issues worthy of serious consideration. By identifying problems with eyewitness evidence and the limitations of many of the forensic sciences, and in many other ways, empirical and experimental studies have substantially outpaced legal experience. Indifference to empirical legal study is likely to reduce the social legitimacy of legal institutions. (shrink)

In The Tragedy of the Self, Gary F. Greif attributes social violence and individual isolation to a contemporary neglect of a fundamental human need for support that only human culture and interaction can promote and reinforce. Greif bases this interpretation on the works of Heinz Kohut, a psychoanalyst who by degrees transformed Freud's theory of the instincts into a theory of the self. Kohut maintains that every individual fundamentally requires continual human support in order to live with confidence and (...) hope. Greif introduces Kohut's understanding of the nature, development, and disintegration of the self, analyzes modern and contemporary assumptions regarding the individualistic, anti-social nature of humans, and concludes that contemporary societal assumptions regarding the acceptance of individualism reflect and perpetuate a tragic human condition. Greif argues that the inability of the self to experience a human, fulfilling life is a tragedy intensified by a century of economic and cultural forces promoting social antagonism. A unique and stimulating book, The Tragedy of the Self will appeal to professionals in psychoanalytic psychology, self-psychology, and philosophy as well as academics and students in the Humanities and Social Sciences. (shrink)

The Great Seljuk Empire. By A. C. S. Peacock. The Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Pp. xiii + 378. $135, £90 ; $43.50, £29.99.

John Porter Brown was a diplomat who served at the American Legation in Constantinople from 1832 to 1872. This is a brief account of his diplomatic career and largely forgotten contribution to early American orientalism.